3 ms·

The Elegant Email

34 points by filament 14y ago

dsr_ 14y ago
All you folks working on automated email tools, workflows and specialized HTML-JavaScript-CSS mail formatters? Stop. Read this. Consider whether your tool adds to human experiences or should be replaced by a webpage with a FAQ.
tarr11 14y ago
The irony is rich here. A blog post of 21 paragraphs and 1,302 words devoted to brevity? I did him a favor of shortening it. http://tldr.io/tldrs/507b5e078edaf0c942000faa http://tldr.io/tldrs/507b5e078edaf0c942000faa BTW - "I do not believe email is not a long form communication medium, and my rule of thumb is that an email should be no longer than three (or four) paragraphs. You might hate this stipulation." I assume this is a typo?
- nickheer 14y ago
  I don't see a typo. The way I read it, Lopp doesn't believe that email cannot ever be used as a long-form communication method, but he sticks to a general rule of 3-4 paragraphs.
  - jrajav 14y ago
    Shouldn't it have been a 'but' and not an 'and', then?
- bo1024 14y ago
  Not that rich. I could write a two-sentence email on why I think blog posts should be long and well thought-out without irony; why not the reverse?
- orangethirty 14y ago
  There is a good point made. Which is that email sucks as a long form communication medium. One quickly gets lost (and as a result loses a lot of time) managing "conversations". It is also very hard to get some sort of continuity with email, because everybody uses it differently. People will often reply with multiple emails when asnwering a group of questions that you sent them. Adding their own questions on top of it, and making it a mess of spaghetti.
cdcarter 14y ago
If you find that you must send a long email full of information and questions (a meeting is impossible due to distance or scheduling), please be sure to break it down by recipient/department and bullet point for them! 14 long paragraphs with actions for a person spread around unevenly is no way to communicate.
oakwhiz 14y ago
I find that some spam filters will mark your email as spam if it has a "poetic" subject line. For this reason I stick to the point. Perhaps it is because spam email subject lines are poetic as well.
swah 14y ago
Is he being ironic about the signature? I thought it should be "as short as possible"...

34 points by filament 14y ago

dsr_ 14y ago

All you folks working on automated email tools, workflows and specialized HTML-JavaScript-CSS mail formatters? Stop. Read this. Consider whether your tool adds to human experiences or should be replaced by a webpage with a FAQ.

tarr11 14y ago

The irony is rich here. A blog post of 21 paragraphs and 1,302 words devoted to brevity? I did him a favor of shortening it. http://tldr.io/tldrs/507b5e078edaf0c942000faa http://tldr.io/tldrs/507b5e078edaf0c942000faa BTW - "I do not believe email is not a long form communication medium, and my rule of thumb is that an email should be no longer than three (or four) paragraphs. You might hate this stipulation." I assume this is a typo?

nickheer 14y ago
I don't see a typo. The way I read it, Lopp doesn't believe that email cannot ever be used as a long-form communication method, but he sticks to a general rule of 3-4 paragraphs.
- jrajav 14y ago
  Shouldn't it have been a 'but' and not an 'and', then?
bo1024 14y ago
Not that rich. I could write a two-sentence email on why I think blog posts should be long and well thought-out without irony; why not the reverse?
orangethirty 14y ago
There is a good point made. Which is that email sucks as a long form communication medium. One quickly gets lost (and as a result loses a lot of time) managing "conversations". It is also very hard to get some sort of continuity with email, because everybody uses it differently. People will often reply with multiple emails when asnwering a group of questions that you sent them. Adding their own questions on top of it, and making it a mess of spaghetti.

cdcarter 14y ago

If you find that you must send a long email full of information and questions (a meeting is impossible due to distance or scheduling), please be sure to break it down by recipient/department and bullet point for them! 14 long paragraphs with actions for a person spread around unevenly is no way to communicate.

oakwhiz 14y ago

I find that some spam filters will mark your email as spam if it has a "poetic" subject line. For this reason I stick to the point. Perhaps it is because spam email subject lines are poetic as well.

swah 14y ago

Is he being ironic about the signature? I thought it should be "as short as possible"...